To be the legacy media is to be ten percent a reporter of news and 90 percent a master of psychology.
The news is a secondary, if not tertiary, matter. What matters most is the narrative and how you can convince people to believe in it. For instance, take this report from the Associated Press, which gives you a great example of how the legacy media plays with your head with just a handful of words.
The post it put out on X reads "BREAKING: More than 20 civil service employees are resigning from Elon Musk’s DOGE, saying they refuse to 'dismantle critical public services.'"
Most people don't bother to click past this point, and will repost or comment on the X thread. This is highly common on both sides of the aisle, and no one knows this better than the legacy media.
BREAKING: More than 20 civil service employees are resigning from Elon Musk’s DOGE, saying they refuse to “dismantle critical public services.” https://t.co/c1OUPUhxhg
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 25, 2025
If you do bother to click on the link, it takes you to the article which elaborates on what these DOGE employees who resigned said:
More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
If you scroll into the meat of the article, where even fewer people venture, you get the real story. They weren't DOGE employees first, they were from the United States Digital Service who had been roped into DOGE, and were holdovers from the Obama era who were going to get the boot anyway:
The staffers who resigned had worked for the United States Digital Service, but said their duties were being integrated into DOGE. Their former office, the USDS, was established under President Barack Obama after the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the web portal that millions of Americans use to sign up for insurance plans through the Democrat’s signature health care law.
All previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.
At this point, it's pretty obvious what the play here is.
These people were pretty much a bureaucratic creation from nearly a decade ago that no longer had much use. As DOGE is there to cut the fat, these were government employees who were getting the boot anyway.
However, instead of just taking the axe, these folks turned themselves into political props with which the media could generate a narrative around for internet denizens. The initial framing is that these are noble patriots who were once a part of Musk's team, but now believe things are going too far! They are resigning because they won't be used as tools by the madman, Elon Musk!
Get the stonemasons ready, because we need statues made of these heroes.
As you can see, this was the Associated Press playing a game with the minds of the people, attempting to introduce a seedling of an idea that things are as out of control as the left has been saying. They attempted to put meat on the bones of the Democrat meltdown happening in D.C., effectively sewing doubt about what Trump's administration is doing to the government, and causing people to become uneasy with Musk and DOGE.
It's psychological manipulation with the goal of getting people to act against their own best interest. If AP can do that, then the bureaucracy they know and love stays safe, and who knows what kind of benefits the AP will get out of that.
I'm sure DOGE will find ways they are.
